"So, what do you want to talk about today, Stiles?"

Stiles squirms in his chair, trying to decide whether he wants the throw pillow behind him because the seat is just a tad too deep, or if it's more comfortable next to him because the armrest is just a little too far away, or if he should just suck it up and get rid of the thing altogether because he keeps messing with it and he probably looks like a crazy person.

Well, kinda too late for that last one.

"Uh, I dunno," he answers, shifting the pillow to his other side. A little better. He forces himself to put his hands in his lap, which just leads him to start picking at his cuticles. "Kinda had a hankering to do one of those inkblot test thingies, actually. You know, find out if I'm really a cat person when I thought I was a dog person all these years."

Doctor Travers arches an eyebrow, and Stiles tries to stop fidgeting. Not that he really cares what the shrink thinks, but he promised his dad he would give this a try and damn him if he's not going to keep his word. He's put that man through enough lately. The least he can do is sit through an hour of this if it'll make him happy.

"Personally, I don't think the Rorschach test is all that useful, but I probably have the cards lying around somewhere if you're that desperate," the doctor offers.

Stiles grunts, looking around the office distractedly, studying all the books and knick knacks on the shelves to try and figure out the kind of person he's dealing with here. There's a lot of puzzle games—the little wooden and metal ones that you have to figure out how to take apart and put back together. A shuffled up Rubik's cube sits on top of a stack of folders on the desk.

"Nah," he says. "On second thought, I'd like to stay in denial about the whole cat thing a little longer."

Travers crooks a smile at him. "What's so bad about cats?"

"Aren't they kind of assholes?" Stiles asks, thinking about the stray cat he and Scott had "adopted" when they were younger. Adopted meaning they'd snuck it into Stiles' house, even though his dad forbade it, because Scott's asthma was too bad for him to keep it at his. That one had been a major asshole, always hissing and scratching and biting at him. But Scott had always had a bleeding heart for animals, and was convinced it was sick and would die if they didn't take care of it, and Stiles never could say no to his best friend. Even if he hated that cat.

It ended up having kittens in his closet.

"I mean, won't they eat you if you die?" he adds as evidence to his point.

The doctor shrugs. "Can't fault them for following their nature to survive. And you'd be dead anyway, so why would you care?"

Stiles hadn't really expected him to entertain the cat conversation, and knows he should drop it, but his stupid mouth keeps talking. Digging himself further into his anti-cat stance. Not that he's ever been vehemently against cats before, but he's not one to be proven wrong. And the longer they talk about cats, the less he'll have to talk about why he's really here.

"Just seems like a betrayal, I guess," he says, inventing an argument to justify this ridiculous conversation. "Like, say I take care of a cat its whole life—feed it, give it a place to live, the whole nine yards—and when I die the thing doesn't bat an eye. Doesn't care at all. Versus a dog which is so loyal it will literally starve itself because it's so sad you're gone."

Travers leans forward a little in his chair. "So what you're saying is, it's a betrayal to those we love to find a way to survive without them? That to show our loyalty, we should lay down and die?"

Stiles narrows his eyes, actually kind of impressed by the segway. "You learn that in shrink school? How to twist any conversation into… Shrinking?"

Shrugging, Travers flashes him a self-satisfied smirk. "You're hardly the first patient I've had who's reluctant to share." He stands and picks up the Rubik's cube, tossing it to Stiles before settling back in his chair and picking up his notebook. "Now, if you want to keep talking about the virtues of cats versus dogs, that's fine. This is your time. But you might find it helpful to talk about what's been going on."

He's right, of course. Stiles could probably fill the entire hour with conversation about anything but what he's supposed to be talking about—he's pretty good at the whole avoidance thing. But he happens to know that his dad is paying a rather large copay out-of-pocket for this, which means he shouldn't be wasting time.

Besides, if it helped his dad, maybe it can help him, too.

He focuses on the Rubik's cube, twisting the colorful rows and trying to ignore the way his heart thumps loudly in his chest. It shouldn't be that hard to say it—he'd rehearsed the cover story a couple of times before his appointment—but his mouth is suddenly very dry. "Okay. Well, it all kinda started a couple months ago… After I ran my car into a tree." After he'd been dunked in an ice bath and technically died for sixteen hours… Semantics. He clears his throat and presses on. "I, uh, hit my head pretty hard, I guess. I don't really remember. I thought I was fine, but…"

"Concussion?" the doctor guesses.

Stiles swallows, nodding. "I actually didn't know about it. Not until a couple days ago. I guess the symptoms can last a while if it goes undiagnosed."

Funnily enough, it's not a total lie. They'd done another MRI before they let him leave the hospital (because being unconscious for a few days and then having a couple seizures apparently warrants concern). And while they hadn't found any signs of the frontotemporal dementia or the possible tumor they'd been theorizing about, they had found something unusual. Evidence of an unhealed concussion.

Now, whether that concussion had really been from when he'd gotten in the accident on the way to save his dad from the root cellar is questionable. At the time, he'd managed to fly under the radar with that little injury (there'd been some other concerns to distract from it), and never ended up going to a doctor, thus he'd never been officially diagnosed with a concussion. And, while in retrospect he might have had some mild concussion-esque symptoms like dizziness and headaches, he'd also been too busy dealing with some other stuff to really notice.

The other possibility is that he received the concussion at some point during his adventure with the fairy, which is entirely possible. There's really no way to tell how long he's had it.

Either way, it provides a convenient cover story for all the weird shit he's been doing the last couple of months.

He's literally brain damaged.

"Anyway," he continues, "I started having some problems. Trouble sleeping, nightmares, stuff like that. And…" This is where talking about this gets dicier. "I dunno. I just wasn't acting like myself. But… I couldn't control it, really." He shrugs, turning the cube over in his hand.

"Was there something in particular that happened?" Travers prompts gently.

The heat of a fire, fresh from an explosion, on his skin as he listens to a man's last breath. The musty smell of rain as he pushes the blade deep into his best friend's gut. Lydia's horrified screams, echoing off the tunnels at Oak Creek. His own voice, foreign in his ears, whispering lie after lie…

"My mom died. When I was ten." He frowns, the croaked confession surprising him. He hadn't thought about bringing her up today, yet the words spill out anyway. "She had this disease, frontotemporal dementia. It's where your frontal lobe shrinks." He taps the cube on his knee, forgetting about trying to solve it, and risks a glance at Travers.

"She started showing signs of it when I was six," he continues, voice cracking. "It was little stuff at first. She'd forget what day it was, leave the milk out. You know, nothing crazy. But then…" His throat closes, tears suddenly pressing against the backs of his eyes.

"They thought at first I might have it, too. It's genetic, so…" Stiles bites his lip in a vain attempt to keep the tears from falling. He doesn't want to cry anymore. "I've always known it was a possibility. It turned out it wasn't, but when stuff started happening…"

"I'm sure that was frightening," Travers comments softly.

Clearing his throat, Stiles shakes his head as if that will shake off the emotions trying to strangle him. "I have a scar," he says, again, a little surprised that the words are coming out of his mouth. He's never really talked about this before, to anybody. He reaches absently for his shoulder where the white line is hidden. "My mom… she forgot who I was and threw a vase at me. Six stitches. I know she didn't mean it, but…"

The doctor finishes his thought for him. "Doesn't make it hurt less."

"I know it wasn't her fault, you know?" he whispers, and this time he does look at the doctor, searching for… Something. "She wasn't herself, wasn't in control. It was the disease. I know that. But… But I can't forgive her. I can't forgive her for hurting me. And if I can't forgive her, how can I expect anyone to forgive me?"

It's quiet for a long moment before Doctor Travers finally speaks. "Do you want to know what I think?"

Stiles wipes at his face, but doesn't answer.

"I think you've had a lot of things happen to you that were outside your control," Travers says. "And that you've experienced a lot of loss. I think the way you're feeling now is a normal reaction to what you've been through. But I also think you don't have to keep feeling this way. It's not going to be easy. There's no magic pill or secret switch that's suddenly going to make everything okay. It's going to be a battle. And it's not one that anyone can fight for you, Stiles. I can help, your dad can help, your friends can help. But in the end, you're going to have to be the one to choose to wake up everyday and keep fighting."

He leans forward and catches Stiles' gaze, his steel blue eyes searching Stiles earnestly.

"So what do you think, Stiles? Are you going to be like the dog who lets itself die, or are you going to be like the cat and find a way to keep living?"

Stiles can't stop staring at the photo.

He knows it was that Lydia put it there, even though she claims to hate that picture. It had to be her. She'd gone through his stuff when he'd gone missing (which she'd confessed quite bashfully to him, and he'd been so thrown by Lydia Martin being bashful that he'd immediately forgiven her and only later thought of all the potentially embarrassing things she might have seen). She must've found it at the bottom of the drawer he'd stuffed it in and stuck it back on the wall.

It was a very Lydia thing to do, a blatant protest to his attempt to bury what happened. She hadn't actually said anything to him about it—in fact, they've all been really careful not to mention Allison around him at all—but he can imagine the lecture anyway. About how they shouldn't forget.

She's right, as always. The picture belongs on his wall.

A knock draws his attention as his dad appears. "Hey," he says, swinging the door further open. It wasn't closed, not all the way. Hasn't been since he got home.

"Hey," Stiles echoes.

"Whatcha up to?"

Glancing at the piles of papers and books surrounding him, he shrugs. "Just going through some stuff," he says. He may have gotten a little overambitious—basically everything he owns is on the floor right now, sorted into chaotic piles that only make sense to him—but he's needed to do a cleanout for a while. He's been shoving things away to deal with later for too long.

"I was thinking about making some lunch," his dad says. "You want to take a break?"

It's not really a question, of course. His dad will make sure he eats, whether or not he wants to. But it is nearly one and for once, Stiles does feel a little hungry. "What do we have?" he asks.

His dad squints thoughtfully. "I think there's some leftover Chinese. Maybe some lunchmeat? Not much else. I need to get to the grocery."

"Oh God," Stiles groans, "please let me go or we'll end up eating frozen pizza all week."

"Hey," his dad bites back defensively, "I may not be as good of a cook as you, but I know how to make more than frozen pizza."

"Boxed macaroni and cheese doesn't count, Dad," Stiles counters.

"It so counts! There's measuring, there's multiple ingredients, and I add those chopped hot dogs, which isn't even in the recipe…" He trails off, shaking his head and waving a hand dismissively. "Whatever. You used to love when I made you mac and cheese."

"When I was, like, five maybe," Stiles says, but a smile tugs at his lips. It feels good to banter with his dad. Normal. "My palette has gotten a little more sophisticated since then."

Raising an eyebrow, his dad retorts, "Oh yeah, because cheeseburgers and curly fries are so sophisticated."

"Fine," he concedes. "Then let me come to the store with you so I can at least make sure we get some actual produce. Pretty sure I haven't seen you eat a vegetable in, like, a month."

He meant it as a joke, but as soon as he says it, he can hear that raspy voice, the one that still hasn't gone away—that he's not sure will ever go away—scraping through his brain. "And whose fault is that, Stiles?"

Quickly, he drops his gaze, hoping his dad doesn't notice the way his entire body goes stiff as he pushes the voice away. He's not listening to it. Not anymore.

His dad leans against the doorframe, crosses his arms in that way he does when he's about to start a serious conversation, and Stiles tries not to visibly wince. He knows they can't ignore the proverbial elephant in the room forever, that eventually they're going to have to talk about the last month.

Just… Not right now.

"Hey," he says, blurting out the first thing that pops into his head before his dad has a chance to say anything. "I was wondering, how come you and mom never had another kid?"

If his dad clocks the forced levity in his tone or the jarring change of topic—which, given the wrinkle that appears between his eyebrows, he does—he doesn't comment on it. Instead, he considers for a moment before answering.

"Your mom wanted another," he admits. "She thought you needed a sibling. I wasn't so sure I could handle the whole newborn thing again, but I could never argue with her when her mind was made up."

"So then why didn't you?" Stiles presses.

This time, his dad sighs, shaking his head. "It doesn't always happen the way you want it to." He shrugs, and there's an undercurrent of sadness in his voice. "Turned out to be for the best anyway, because she got sick not long after that. Sometimes the universe has a funny way of working things out." He cocks his head. "Why do you ask?"

"I dunno," Stiles says, shrugging. "Just… Wondered how different our lives would be, you know? If you and mom had another kid."

His dad raises a hand to rub at his chin, eyes going distant as he imagines it. "Yeah, well we may not have had another kid," he finally says, nodding toward the photo on the wall, "but turns out we didn't really need to. You already had a brother."

Stiles follows his gaze to the goofy grin on Scott's face. "Yeah, I suppose you're right," he agrees with a crooked smile.

"So," his dad says slowly, changing the subject with a little more grace than Stiles had. "Lunch. Want to go somewhere? Mexican? Burger joint?"

Stiles' stomach actually growls at the thought of food. He bites his lip, trying to decide what sounds good. "Randy's?" he suggests.

"Sure."

Picking his way across his obstacle course of a room, Stiles points out, the snark heavy in his voice, "They have salads."

His dad rolls his eyes, but throws an arm around him and ruffles his hair affectionately. "You know, on second thought, maybe another kid would have been a good idea. Give you someone else to boss around."

Stiles smirks, thinking about his sister from the dream world. "Nah. We probably would've just ganged up on you."

His dad's laughter rumbles through him, shaking loose the shadows clinging to his heart a little more.

Heeeey, I'm back! Sorry for the long delay in finishing this story. This chapter and the epilogue have been 80% done for ages, I just really struggled with those finishing touches for some reason. Anyway, it's finally done for better or for worse!